Sunday, 30 August 2009

Today I was in Newcastle and passing the club shop in town noticed they had a third kit on sale. Can some one explain this to me if it's not to rip off the fans that the club has already ripped the mickey out of with the antics since the sacking of Sir Bobby Robson.

Saturday, 29 August 2009

On the ninth of September this year (09.09.09 who thought that one up - no doubt some mad Yanks will realise that 999 upside down is 666 so the Beatles are really Iron Maiden!!) the Beatles are going to have their back catalogue of thirteen studio albums reissued plust the non album stuff on the two Past Masters discs, with the sound scrubbed up along with a documentary pertaining to the relevant album. That's all well , good and understandable.

What is not understandable is that on the same day 45 songs from this excellent catalogue have gone through the processing mill for the various "Rock Band" game variations where numpties can pretend to be their idols with the aid of various pretend instrument. So who's going to be "Don't Call Me By My Stage Name"?

My home cinema set up ,if you want to grace it with that name , consists of a 32" Beko Flat screen CRT TV that cost me £80 second hand five years back, a Samsung Hard Disc Recorder / DVD player and a Samsung Home Cinema Amp (both of which proclaim their DTS ability in the many badges on the front) with Yamaha sub woofer and speakers. The makes of all these bits of technology are irrelevant apart from my old Beko TV doesnt suffer from the "Motion Blur" of the modern Plasma / LCD TVs.

Anyway I decided to listen to H.A.A.R.P. the live Muse Album of their 2007 Wembley Show on the "Black Holes and Revelations" tour. I was given the option of stereo or DTS , no 5.1 option. Switched to DTS option there's nothing . Tried DTS options on a couple of other DVDs, still nothing. Checked that fount of all knowledge , the internet , and someone suggested that the digital sound stream should be bitstream rather than PCM. What the hell does that have to with DTS? I don't know.

Monday, 24 August 2009

The football season is well underway , England have won the Ashes despite Australia scoring more runs , taking more wickets and generally being better , but that's the nature of the game , the best team doesnt always win.

Incidentally The Duckworth-Lewis Method of determining the score in one day cricket has inspired an album of the same name featuring the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon and an be sampled here.

The Newcastle saga shows no sign of resolution with Mike Ashley seemingly asset stripping the club of it's best players , while on the field the club are actually doing quite well , positioned at a healthy third in the Championship at the time of the post. We'll just have to see how things pan out.

Friday, 7 August 2009

After what seems like years , Newgate Street reopens to busses . This is going to to completely mess with my head as the 36 reverts to it's normal back and forth route rather than the current circular one!

As well as that the new football season kicks off with Sheffield United at Middlesborough , Preston entertain Bristol City and Newcastle visit West Brom for the inaugural BBC televised match. Hopefully there will be many monents like Jeff Stelling's (hartlepool supporter) manic finale to the 2008-9 seaons when the Championship final play off place was grabbed by Preston thanks to goals from "The Beast" Jon Parkin and Sean Saint Ledger:

Sunday, 2 August 2009

A pleasant day in York yesterday was marred by the fact the Track Records another independent record shop had bitten the dust (see here for the ongoing saga) . This means there is an "award winnng" DJ shop which seemed to specialise in non descript T Shirts , HMV, and charity shops as the only palces to buy music left in York. This is happening everywhere , and while the internet is a convenient place to shop , and downloading is convenient, if we dont watch out we'll only be able to buy what Tesco deem suitable for us. The non changing Top 30 , X-Factor future seems to be getting closer by the day.

I really don't know what the answer is, I try and do my bit by buying from Reflex , RPM , JG Windows and Roots 2 Music in Newcastle (Spin is still going online only) , but I'm just one person and to quote Joni Mitchell: